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This study aims to illustrate the potential of coworking spaces as one way to achieve optimal workplace arrangements and corporate real estate (CRE) agility, especially for large organizations. The authors suggest understanding coworking spaces from the boundary organization theory and organizational growth model.

This study takes a threefold theoretical approach: conducting a literature review and identifying the gaps in coworking studies for large organizations, applying the organizational boundary theory in tandem with organizational growth models in the context of coworking spaces as a part of the workplace ecology and identifying future research agendas for coworking studies.

This study proposes a conceptual framework of how coworking spaces can be viewed and used as a boundary object throughout the organizational growth phases. Besides, four major future research areas are proposed: case studies and/or empirical evidence of coworking spaces as CRE buffer zones and boundary objects for organizations, coworking space design and different formats of boundary object-infused collaboration, coworking space design and management for its own agility and flexibility and how coworking affects employees’ performance, health and well-being and professional training/mentoring.

For large organizations, there is a clear pressure to rethink CRE to increase workplace agility, flexibility and resilience, much accelerated with the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the effective use of coworking spaces as a part of CRE portfolios will help enhance corporates’ state and ability to reassess, realign and replan their CRE portfolios.

Many existing studies about coworking spaces are based on observations and self-reported justification at an individual level. Whether and how coworking can benefit companies at an organizational level is largely unstudied and worth more attention. This study illustrates a new theoretical understanding of how coworking spaces can be a part of CRE portfolios and bring potential benefits of inter and intraorganizational collaboration throughout the phases of organizational growth.

Workplace space utilization data reveals patterns of space usage, the occupants’ presence and mobility within the office building. Nowadays, emerging technology such as smart sensors and devices can revolutionize the measurement of space utilization data, which is originally dominated by human observers with paper and pencil. However, these novel instruments are often used in an old fashion, which restricts the exploitation of their full potential. This study aims to shed new light on the benefits and limits of using smart technology in measuring space utilization data and discusses the challenges and opportunities in analyzing the data measured by smart sensors.

First, the literature regarding common methods and previous studies about office space utilization measurement was reviewed. Then, a data set consisting of space utilization data collected through Passive Infra-Red sensors for 35 meeting rooms in a bank building was carefully evaluated. Finally, the space utilization results based on methods calculated in two different granularities were compared.

The number of occupied hours calculated at an hour level was 1.32-hour larger than that calculated at a minute level. As both results show the concept of space utilization, which was the amount of time that the space was occupied, this paper revealed a gap between the two space utilization calculation methods and further discussed the issues and challenges for future space utilization data analysis and benchmarking.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study critically addressing office space utilization issues by comparing calculation methods in different granularity.

In large organizations, space planning relies on workgroup leaders to indicate spatial adjacency preferences. However, many factors affect workgroups’ adjacency preferences, and it is not clear how the choices are made. This paper aims to explore whether the adjacency preferences are influenced by the collaboration relationship or constrained by the organizational structure.

The authors studied a large company’s spatial adjacency planning with an in-depth analysis of its formal organizational structure and collaboration network. A sample of 183 managers was surveyed regarding groups with whom they want to be spatially adjacent and groups with whom they mostly interact. The data enabled us to test three structural factors related to adjacency preference: department affiliation, workgroup’s prestige and collaboration relation. The authors used the quadratic assignment procedure analysis to examine the correlations between network matrices.

The results suggest that department affiliation and collaboration relations are significantly correlated to adjacency preferences. The authors did not find evidence supporting the notion that a workgroup’s prestige affects the preference. Among the three factors, collaboration relation best predicts the preference, which echoes Pena et al.’s (1977) argument that space planners should look into how groups function, rather than merely following the organizational chart.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research was the first to explore the choice of spatially adjacent workgroup through a detailed network analysis of the formal structure, work collaboration relations and other group-level characteristics. The findings have noteworthy cross-disciplinary implications, given that spatial proximity can be taken as a human resource management strategy to facilitate the overall interactions between workgroups.

The purpose of this paper is to review the use of technologies for measuring space occupancy to guide the selection of appropriate tools for workplace post-occupancy evaluation (POE) studies. The authors focus on how actual space occupancy was measured in previous studies and the pros and cons of the different technologies and tools. This paper also addresses research gaps and directions for future research.

The space occupancy measures/tools are categorized based on the three types of technologies: environmental/ambient sensors, wearable sensors/smartphones and computer vision. A total of 50 studies are reviewed to identify the capabilities and limitations of these measurements.

Based on review results, the authors propose that although sensor technology can be a useful addition to the measures/tools list, a comprehensive review of the research goal, the occupants' behavior, and the environmental settings' characteristics should be conducted beforehand. Selecting appropriate technology is critical for collecting the proper behavioral data type, with a lower level of surveillance and increased validity.

This paper urges critical thinking about existing occupancy measures/tools across various fields, to inform the adoption and creation of new building occupancy measures. The knowledge of emerging sensor technology allows researchers to better study the temporal patterns of occupant behavior over extended periods and in a wide range of settings.

The purpose of this paper is to study whether the use of a shared study space played a role in shaping graduate students’ social networks by exploring how the copresence in space was related to the structure of friendship and advice networks. The authors first proposed two concepts of spatial copresence: measured spatial-temporal copresence and perceived copresence. The authors then examined the role of copresence through a case study of a shared study space occupied by 27 graduate students in the same department.

Copresence relations were first constructed through a six-month room access history data set and self-reported data to examine whether measured spatial-temporal copresence was consistent with perceived copresence. Friendship and advice network relations were then analyzed with copresence, social media connections, class project collaboration relations and social homophily (nationality, gender, cohort) through quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) and MQAP analysis.

The authors found that students who used the shared study space more often reported more friendship and advice ties. The perceived copresence and the measured spatial-temporal copresence were highly correlated. Copresence relations, as measured by survey and room access history, were both significantly correlated with advice relation, which was associated with perceived social support.

This study contributes to the debate about whether “space” continues to play significant roles in graduate students’ social networks in the context of flexible learning environments. The results also reveal new directions for research methods in studying spatial proximity in flexible settings.